Hard drives

[rigman]

Hi,

silly question really but why would you have to have a large and fast hard drive for a HTPC if thats all it was going to be used for. Surely enough room for Windows, powerstrip, WinDVD, DVD genie and a bit extra for good measure would suffice? I could understand a good DVD player and a good graphics and sound card but reading some specs the owners seem to have huge hard drives and I cannot understand why. Is most of the capacity just left empty and it is a "my hard drive is bigger than yours"

Really silly question now. To get DTS and DD from the DVD what do I need to do? Do I need to connect the two pin digital out from the DVD player to the sound cards SDIF in then connect this to my decoder. I am getting the Pioneer 106S when (awaiting order to be delivered) and the Fortisimo II sound card. At the moment my cheapo DVD is just connected to the motherboard via IDE connector ribbon. I cannot recall getting a connection lead with my current DVD and was wondering if the Pioneer comes with one or do you have to buy it separately.

I have been building my own PC's for years from the 386 days and I suppose I should know this :blush: but I have only recently fitted a DVD drive having always just used CD roms which had a connection lead to the soundcard.

thanks

Darren :o

[alanrob]

Can't think of any reason for having a large HD. Maybe it's because it isn't easy getting a small HD (less than 10GB anyway).

When I used my Pioneer DVD Rom drive and a Hollywood+ decoder card the DD and DTS signal was passed down the IDE interface (as it is a digital signal after all) and the H+ card would pump it out via it's digital plug.

[iwilson]

Alan is correct - just to enlarge slightly as long as your sound card has digital out you're in business.

Big hard drives do have their uses. If you have a TV card you can use the hard drive as a VCR. Also you can rip DVD's to your hard drive if for example you have a noisy dvd drive. Whenever I have friends over to watch a movie I download a few high res trailers of the internet mix them with a few DD trailers using this program AVI screensaver (http://www.geocities.com/bfcarter/) and play them as an introduction just like the cinema. If you really want to get smart then take a look at Digital forge (http://www.digitalforge.com/Gallery/gallery.html) they will make an intro specially for your HC $$ - or you can download some of their examples.

Hmm since I seem to have got a little carried away I may as well post this a new thread.

Anyway this should give you a few ideas.

Ian